Description:

This template is for producing a memorandum (memo) within the Canadian Forces. It was made by using the Military Writing Guide provided for K. Thomas by his MCpl. Following many terrible experiences of having a memo come back with formatting adjustments required, he decided to come up with a template that will for the most part print a correctly-formatted memo with little need to make tweaks by the user. You just replace the bogus text in the template with the text you need for your memo and run the file through the engine to produce a PDF.

Mac users can use TeXShop after installing the MacTeX Distribution and Windows users can use MikTeX. Be aware that this is open source software so is not allowed on DND computers but work very well from your home computer. It’s mature software that is more stable and less prone to viruses than any Microsoft product so you are safe there even though DND may not think so. You can also compile the template online via the Overleaf button below.

LaTeX uses files with a dot tex (e.g. filename.tex) extension on them and these are nothing but pure text files on any computer making them completely compatible with any computer operating system. For Canadian Forces Members who are not familiar with this system please download this template, unzip it and and read the commented lines beginning with the % sign inside the .tex template file. These lines will not be printed in the memo itself but are there for guidance on how you should format the memo or why different commands are needed.

Changing the text and running it through the engine will give you a PDF file. Test print it and go ahead and measure the margins. It should be pretty much on the money. Kevin has test printed many copies in the tweaking of this template and has finally have gotten it perfect and thinks that it will work for you 99% of the time unless you get into 2 page memos (which most are not).

With a PDF file you may be able to email to your DND account but sometimes it may not make it through the security so you can take it on your DND issued USB stick but please remember that normal scrubbing of these sticks is also required before connecting them to a DND computer.

I hope this Memo Template helps all DND employees that have had difficulty in fighting Word for proper formatting or just not know the formatting rules as we are not all Resource Management Support clerks. I have found that LaTeX outputs a much nicer memo than Word ever did and now will use this template exclusively.

-K. Thomas

Original Author:

This template was created by K. Thomas with extensive modifications by Vel.